Kansas.com: Annie Calovich

Hunt for this perfect Christmas tree started early

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:40 CST

The owners of Pine Lake Christmas Tree Farm in Derby found themselves in the role of their customers last week.

Glen and Celia Goering set out to choose the perfect Christmas tree. But their idea of "perfect" took on a bit of a different standard compared with those brought by most families to the tree farm. The Goerings had been charged with choosing the governor's Christmas tree.

They were given some criteria: The tree had to be a Scotch pine. It had to be 8 to 9 feet tall. A traditional choice for a traditional house — Cedar Crest, the governor's mansion in Topeka.

A banquet for birds

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:06 CST

It took a few weeks, but the birds are finally finding the new heated birdbath in my side yard. For a while I was feeling rejected by my feathered friends, a presence that I always have an ear and an eye out for beyond the windows.

The look of the heated bath — a green plastic bowl in a wrought-iron stand — is different from the stone bath that sits out in non-freezing weather. But the stone would crack in the cold, so it's drained and protected — at least one thing I've done to prepare for winter. (It's still OK if it doesn't come.)

If you're feeling the neglect of birds at your feeders and baths right now, it's probably because nature's banquet table is pretty full.

How to never rake again

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:07 CST

I got a kick out of walking the neighborhood late Halloween afternoon, just ahead of the trick-or-treaters, and comparing the state of leaves from yard to yard.

I came upon one man who had parted the leaves like the Red Sea in front of the costumed children: The leaves had been banished to two small squares of lawn near the street, separated by the sidewalk. They covered the grass except for a border of bright green blades around the sides, which told me that this was a new lawn.

The sunny day was perfect, the air still, and the leaves obeyed their master. He told me he intended to vacuum them up the next day so that the grass wouldn't be smothered. And then deposit the bags of leaves on the curb.

Dracula orchid beckons growers to the dark side

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:03 CDT

Every rare now and then, when the sky is dark and the moon is full and the wolves are howling, I get the urge to...

Grow an orchid.

The latest frightening occurrence arose this week when I heard the tale of the Dracula vampira orchid.

Autumn is bursting with color this year

ANNIE CALOVICH — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:15 CST

I was thrilled to get lost in Reflection Ridge this week, coursing around Tee Time, down Meadow Pass and doubling back to Reflection Road, all the while taking in the views at every bend.

The past week has been spectacular for fall color, and the various hues are stacked one on top of the other in the west-side neighborhood — fire-engine-red burning bushes on orange sugar maples on golden Chinese pistaches on purple ornamental pears. I could’ve stayed lost all day.

The weather has been ideal for prolonging this feast for the eyes. Think back to falls past when the summers were dry and the leaves fell crisp and dusty. Contrast that to this year, when the trees and shrubs and lawns and flowers have enjoyed a cool and damp summer and a fall of moderate temperatures that haven’t frozen the plants on one hand or fried them on the other.

Look for the sunshine anywhere you can find it

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:05 CDT

The double whammy of gloomy skies and a near-frost had me eagerly watching the mail for results of a Vitamin D test my doctor had ordered last week.

Actually, no matter what the level of "sunshine vitamin" that ended up registering in my blood, I was suffering a serious deficit of light this week.

I spent last weekend home with a cold, tearing up the house on Saturday and sitting amid the debris, spent, on Sunday. By Monday, ready to climb the walls if I couldn't get a ticket to a sun-splashed island, I considered the limited things in my control and rearranged the living room.

Pick tomatoes and flowers while you can

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:07 CDT

On a visit to Botanica one fair day in the middle of the week, my eyes were momentarily blinded when the sun hit a bed of white mums named Wilma.

It was like old-fashioned flashbulbs going off. (I had watched "Rear Window" a few nights before, and Jimmy Stewart's life-saving ploy of blinding the killer with flashes was still fresh.) I froze the image of the white mums in my mind as a hedge against impending winter whiteness.

Then I proceeded to bask in my trip around the gardens, past heavy rose blooms and billowy grasses, jotting down the names of Furman's Red salvia greggii and Crocodile ivy geranium to try at home, and taking pictures of my favorite bend in the gardens — over the wall from Sim Golf Course, gazing back toward the stream running under the Pavilion, catching sight of purple mums against the sparkling water, a green weeping willow, a blue spruce and gold-turning trees in the distance — a lush, varied, full view that I had to capture before it vanished in the cold.